Educational Technology

The project surveyed students at Macquarie and three other universities about cheating in higher education. Of the students surveyed at Macquarie, 55 per cent said academic integrity was a serious problem and many agreed to join a student-led group to help renew trust in the system. Arts student Gillian Downie, who is completing a master of arts degree as a distance learning student, joined the group. She said one initiative the ambassadors promoted was an online learning module, Academic Integrity for Students, a resource that complements the StudyWISE student support module that helps first-year and returning students plan study habits. The modules are not compulsory. Miss Downie said the AIM group was yet to find a sense of identity because it had only been operating for a short time. “They are constantly trying to be proactive to help the students do the right thing,” she said.

It turns out special education isn’t just for special education students. And, it seems there’s an app for almost everything and everyone. When Kim Janssen talks about how Attleboro schools use technology to teach students with disabilities, for example, she refers to something called “universal design.” Janssen, the assistive technology coordinator for Attleboro schools, said universal design is a concept that recognizes the wide range of human ability, taking into account physical, perceptual and cognitive disabilities, as well as body types. She said designers use it to create products and methods that are beneficial for everyone.

Nearly 800 high school students in the Atlanta Public Schools attended an online summer school that had to be overhauled when it became clear it wasn’t moving students fast or far enough. Along with adding two days to the 16-day summer term, APS discarded the online component and brought in teachers for small group instruction. In a bit of artful dodging to the question of the program’s success, Strickland said, “As the world of technology evolves and provides increased opportunities for the individualization of education, APS is committed to embracing innovative practices that ensure more students are successful. With that innovation, however, comes the expectation that there will be a steep learning curve, and that not every implementation will go flawlessly.”

The San Mateo Office of Education is working to expand online learning for incarcerated youth in court schools, according to a response letter to the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury. The grand jury investigated services for jailed youth and concluded the Office of Education should ensure that credits obtained by juveniles in the program should be counted toward graduation and that online education should be a greater priority.

Research outfit Gartner tracked a 9.5 percent decline in shipments in the second quarter of this year compared to the same time a year ago, posting a tally of 68.4 million units. Meanwhile, researchers at IDC, which doesn’t count tablets in its report, calculated an 11.8 percent drop year-over-year to 66.1 million PCs shipped. To put that number into context, Apple said in its most recent earnings report that it had sold 61 million iPhones during the same quarter—and that’s just one smartphone from one (massively popular) company. Manufacturers saw declines across the board, both in the U.S. and abroad. Lenovo held on to the title of top PC seller in the world with a 20.3 percent share of the market, according to IDC, followed by US manufacturers HP (18.5 percent) and Dell (14.5 percent).

The San Mateo Office of Education is working to expand online learning for incarcerated youth in court schools, according to a response letter to the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury. The grand jury investigated services for jailed youth and concluded the Office of Education should ensure that credits obtained by juveniles in the program should be counted toward graduation and that online education should be a greater priority. The report, “Is the San Mateo County Office of Education adequately educating its incarcerated youth?” was released Wednesday and recommends that more collaboration is needed between the Office of Education, the Probation Department and Behavioral Health and Recovery Services to develop a more comprehensive transition plan to ensure contact is made with a student’s family and school before the student is released from detention.

High school graduates across the area celebrated an important milestone last month but for some it was a long time coming. Kaleena Dyk and Jason Richardson, members of Community Living Brant, returned to school as adults to complete their high school diploma. This time, however, it was all online. With the support of Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s distance education and training network, and their educational partner, Quinte Adult Education located in Belleville, they were able to take all their courses online. Contact Nord partners with Ontario’s 24 public colleges, 22 public universities, and 250 literacy and basic skills and training providers to deliver online programs and courses to residents living in 600 small, rural, remote, aboriginal and francophone communities across Ontario.

As efforts to increase bandwidth and internet connectivity in K-12 schools grow, a new report from CDW-G, based on a survey of 400 K-12 IT professionals, reveals just how connected — or not — the nation’s classrooms are today. The CDW-G K-12 Connected Heat Map outlines wired and wireless connectivity in a state-by-state display. The map is an ongoing project and CDW-G is asking schools to fill in their details to help make it more complete. Currently, there is not enough data to shade several states in the midwest and west.

Nonprofit Digital Wish is offering technical support grants to school administrators who need assistance with planning one-to-one computing programs for their elementary or middle schools. Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis through the summer months. The grant is open to public, charter and nonprofit independent schools. Digital Wish has implemented one-to-one computing programs in 28 schools — developing expertise, evaluation programs and sustainability tools that can help get a school’s one-to-one technology program off the ground.

The idea is to make life more convenient, and to provide useful data about the campus, said Anind K. Dey, the project’s lead investigator and an associate professor at the university’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. And it won’t stop at Carnegie Mellon’s borders. Eventually, the experiment is to expand into the city of Pittsburgh, in hospitals, at bus stops, on bridges. Mr. Dey envisions that the campus could be wired with temperature sensors, cameras, microphones, humidity sensors, vibration sensors, and more in order to provide people with information about the physical world around them. Students could determine whether their professors were in their offices, or see what friends were available for lunch.

Ron Kraemer (rkraemer@nd.edu) is Chief Information and Digital Officer at the University of Notre Dame.

Have you thought lately about what you do for a living? Not what your job title is or how you fill your days with activities, but what you or your unit produces that is valued by your institution.

I attended a project-update meeting a couple weeks ago with our campus leaders from Finance, HR, Campus Safety, Campus Services, Facilities, and Auxiliary Operations. As everyone described all of their most important projects, I realized that virtually every project had notable IT components. When my turn came to speak, I almost just wanted to say: “I have little to add; everyone else just described all of my important projects that support university administration.”

Parents have plenty of things to worry about when they send their kids off to college: money, physical safety, their happiness, empty-nest syndrome, their future. Do they now have to worry about identity theft and data security, too? In a word, yes. Colleges and universities have been the target of phishing scams for years. And while they continue to get better at dealing with information security threats, the ways our institutions of higher learning defend themselves against cybercriminals are as myriad as the forms of cyberattacks they face.

The average amount that college students spend on course materials appears to be declining. But not necessarily because textbooks are cheaper. A growing number of students, surveys show, simply skip buying required course materials. A survey of undergraduates on 23 campuses by the National Association of College Stores, expected to be released on Thursday, found that students spent an average of $563 on course materials during the 2014-15 academic year, compared with $638 the year before. The decrease is due in part to the rise of textbook-rental programs, which cost less, association officials note. But more students than in the past avoid acquiring course materials altogether, unless they see that the professor is making heavy use of the materials.

Ask an employee from just about any industry in Canada, and they’ll tell you: there is a huge gap between the training required to move up the career ladder and the training provided by their employers. A recent survey found that while 71 per cent of employers agree they have a responsibility to provide career management programs for their employees, only 29 per cent actually offer them. So how do we close this gap in training needs? Continuing education can play a huge role. As Dean of The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University in Toronto, I meet and talk to professionals from all disciplines who are passionate about learning, and are looking for the newest information or skills that will lead them to the next big break in their career. Here are six continuing education trends that can help to close Canada’s training gap.

A white paper from Extension Engine outlines four revenue models, based on a survey of 136 US colleges and universities. The most popular revenue source, used in 71 percent of the schools in the survey, comes from offering for-credit online courses that students pay for. Fifty-eight percent of schools compete for grants to support research on new online pedagogy and course delivery, but the report says “expenditures on these efforts are typically high and go largely unrecouped.” The less popular—but more “novel”—strategies, according to the report, involve the use of MOOCs as a recruiting tool for pre-matriculated students, and as a new way to maintain an active alumni community (and generate more donations).

Concurrent with the development of the active learning space came a change in student demographics as the Millennial Generation arrived on campus. Often referred to as digital natives, millennials grew up with the Internet and hundreds of television channels; as a result, their expectations are completely different from those of previous generations of students. Millennials have influenced, and will continue to influence, higher education in a number of ways. As students, digital natives have forced higher education leaders to communicate and educate in new ways that meet millennials’ needs. For many decades, institutions offered education in a space of their choosing, on a schedule of their choosing, and in a style of their choosing. Millennials no longer accepted that model, demanding that education be offered in a space of their choosing, on a schedule of their choosing, and in a style of their choosing. Those spaces, schedules, and styles are often radically different from the offerings of traditional higher education.

They are taking them for the flexibility they provide in their course schedules during the school year, said Hempfield High School Assistant Principal Bill Brossman. Some students use the summer to take courses required for high school graduation, and then enroll in more advanced placement courses that suit their academic proclivities, school officials say. Others, free up time for athletics or the arts.

Whether you’re preparing for a new career or experimenting with magic powers, it’s worth knowing how to program. The best way to learn to program is through trial and error by working on projects that interest you. There’s no substitute for solving problems mostly on your own, and for seeking out help only when necessary. The DIY approach makes concepts real and memorable because you’ve implemented them, rather than reading material that may be forgotten. What follows are a few of what, in my opinion, are the best educational options out there to reach a moderate level of skill as a programmer. Feel free to tell us about others you’d recommend in the comments section below

An all-boy club for anything sounds weird to many of us nowadays, but that’s exactly what was going on … in a library of all places. The Timmins Public Library in Ontario denied letting girls into a summer session on robotics. That was until this Change.org petition by Cash Cayen went online and got over 30,000 supporters. Cash says the library wouldn’t let her join the session because it was only offered to boys. They did offer to put her on a waiting list. This all comes as the effort to get women and girls interested in the world of science and engineering continues to gain traction. And it seems to be working. A study by the National Science Foundation found girls are earning math and science credits at roughly the same rates as boys.

More children than ever in Ohio are learning via online schools, a trend that local parents say is more the result of wanting more for their child than it is about their local school district. Increased popularity for this option has seen enrollments totals blossom from 44 such schools serving approximately 17,000 students in 2004 to 27 e-schools serving 39,044 students in the 2013-14 school year. That simultaneous decrease in the amount of schools and increase in enrollment has bolstered class ranks, leading to numerous Ohio e-learning institutions graduating their largest classes ever, including Ohio Virtual Academy, an accredited, full-time, online public community school that in June graduated 750 students, the largest graduating class in school history.